Industrial plants are often managed using process control systems. Example industrial plants include processing facilities, manufacturing plants, chemical plants, crude oil refineries, and ore processing plants. Among other operations, process control systems typically manage the use of smart instruments, for example transmitters, motors, valves, pumps, and other actuators or industrial equipment in the processing facilities.
In industrial plants, plant operators usually send a request to have a field device checked if the operators notice any malfunction in the process values transmitted by the field device or suspect a problem with the field device. Before starting any maintenance activities, maintenance engineers generally ask the operators to take the necessary actions to safeguard the process operation where the device is used in the process control system. This is to avoid a sudden disruption in the operation of the process control system, which may occur once the field device is taken out for maintenance. The process control system will no longer receive or send live process values to or from the field device when the field device is taken offline. This sudden unavailability of the live process values may cause unwanted disturbances in a portion of the process control system.
Many industrial process control systems provide an option for operators to manually simulate a process value to safeguard against unwanted disturbances when a field device is taken offline for maintenance. The simulated process value from the field device could be used in multiple connections in the overall process control system. However, in many industrial plants, the identification of such connections is purely manual and is therefore prone to human error. Additionally, when physically taking the field device offline, a field technician needs to be able to correctly and reliably identify the correct field device. The manual aspects of identification and decision-making in taking a field device offline for maintenance can have various disadvantages, including disturbances in plant processes, as well as plant safety or productivity issues.